Living In The Moment of Shattered Glass

For we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you....This is what the Lord says to you: ‘Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s....You will not have to fight this battle. ...Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged.’” 

II Chronicles 20: 12, 15, 17.

I was sitting in the back seat of a small car in Italy. My husband was driving. As we slowed down to make a right turn, something all American drivers do by habit but Italians would never consider doing, a man on a motorcycle drove up our back windshield and onto the roof of the car.  His bike was mangled, but fortunately no one was hurt.  In that brief moment when I turned my head around to view the source of the bump and crash, I saw the entire windshield had turned from clear glass to a watery Mediterranean blue. Thousands of crackles formed dime-size pieces of glass all held in place for a split second, just before every tiny piece rained down like a small waterfall onto the back windowsill.

When the vast army is around you, and the Holy Spirit has opened your eyes to see it, you feel as though you are living in the moment of shattered glass. It is the moment you must decide - this battle is not yours, but God's. He says "you will not have to fight this battle." Indeed, with sex addiction, you absolutely cannot fight this battle - you will lose every time.

Facing unrepentant sexual acting out and the accompanying distancing and verbal abuse makes me physically shaky on many days - I am the crashed window briefly holding myself together. The vast army is the sex trade, the millions of online porn movie producers, the women selling services just blocks from our house, the tantalizing shops, the lions circling my husband.  

On the worst weeks my stomach is in perpetual knots. Still, God says "do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army." This is not a winsome promise, but a command! How do I respond to this command? I have no strength left in me to stand up on the battlefield - I am shattered glass. Only by God's grace can I avoid despair.

There is a Bible story told to children that illustrates a man in a battle where the only option left is to trust God to do all the fighting and protecting. Daniel is given a death sentence and imprisoned in a den of hungry lions.[1] In the earliest days of facing my husband's sexual addiction my children were young. They learned the Sunday school song "Daniel in the Lion's Den" which had the prayerful line "Angels shut the lions' mouths, oh angels shut the lions' mouths." I often sang that verse under my breath, pleading that the angels would shut the mouths of the lions circling around my husband. But like Daniel, I cannot fight the battle. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you Lord.


 

[1] Daniel 6

The Other Women: Of Prostitutes & Parables

Jesus' Parable of the Two Sons: “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.  Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you." 

Matt: 21:28-31

Pornography is both the seed and the fertilizer for planting desires we should not grow. The harvest is the same whether in a marriage or in sex trafficking - using others, usually using women. The devaluation of a spouse by her husband is no less traumatizing than the “using” behavior of the men making profits from the sex trade - both are violent to the soul and body - sister sins, as it were.

You may call me crazy, but today my heart is breaking for the many women my husband has used as prostitutes. Facing my husband's life-long sex addiction, I have experienced only a slow drip of the toxins called de-valuation and contempt, compared to the tidal wave most prostitutes must endure every day.  What terrible things must have been done to these women, to bring them to the cold place where they could sell intimate and private bodily actions for money? What terrible abuse was happening to them just before and after that trick, to force them to do it again and to force them to turn over the money to a controlling and abusive man? How much physical and emotional violence must they have suffered over the years? What dangers and diseases were they forced to absorb? How many johns does it take to steal your self-esteem? Who physically or emotionally or sexually abused them as girls and young women, causing so much deep hurt that the only perceived option was to run away and never come back?

Why did they not have anyone, anyone at all, to help them move away from this ugly, soul-numbing existence?  Where was their family, their community, their neighborhood church? Who gave them the first drugs leading to addiction and sexual bondage?  What young man deceived them with false promises of love and protection?  How many awful words and touches have they endured from unhealthy, selfish men?  Where are the godly men who can protect them? Where is the Church?

How long, oh Lord?

I forgive you sisters!

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